


Shooting Contest

by OneMoreAltmer



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hunting Humans, Incest, Mythology - Freeform, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:10:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14799747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneMoreAltmer/pseuds/OneMoreAltmer
Summary: Lend me your fair tongue and clear sight, heavenly Muse, Erato, as I tell the tale of the beautiful Twins, the far-shooters Apollo and Artemis, on that day when they contested skill against skill for the sweetest of prizes.





	Shooting Contest

               Lend me your fair tongue and clear sight, heavenly Muse, Erato, as I tell the tale of the beautiful Twins, the far-shooters Apollo and Artemis, on that day when they contested skill against skill for the sweetest of prizes.

               Apollo found his sister where he had expected to find her: stalking a seven-point buck in Yellowstone National Park. She was crouched and silent among tall pines, her long limbs smeared with local soil and pine sap to mask her scent; the telephoto lens on her camera seemed nearly as long as a notched arrow would have been.

               With graceful deliberation, he stepped on a dry fallen twig as he approached from behind her. As it snapped in warning, the buck startled and fled, and Artemis, his beloved predator, rose and spun in a single motion, recognized her golden brother, and scowled without real anger. “Bastard!”

               “No more so than any of our siblings,” he grinned, stepping closer. “And I have brought you a present! A list.”

               “A list?” she echoed, and then slowly came the smile he’d wanted. “You’re going to hunt with me.”

               He drew out the roster of names, which as part of his whim to make the whole exercise more “traditional,” he had written out on paper. Lowering her camera to let it hang by its strap around her long neck, Artemis took the list from his hand, a quick brush of fingers, and scanned its contents.

               “What crimes have they committed?” she asked.

               “They have presumed to tell the gods to whom they may appear and in what forms,” Apollo told her. He knew this well: he had compiled the list himself. “They have invoked the wrath of the chthonic courts against those who disagree with them.”

               “Hubris _and_ violent hearts,” Artemis nodded. “Both classics.”

               “Oh, also! They have forbidden depictions of our passion. Not only yours and mine,” he clarified, although that alone would be enough for her, “but any of us, with each other or with mortals.”

               She raised her brows, perfect arches. “Have they, then? Not, I suppose, because they are confused about what happened to Arachne.”

               He stepped into her space, teasing, his breath on her shoulder. “You will be pleased to know,” he purred, “that sex is the exclusive province of humans now. Admission that it touches us is blasphemous.”

               “ _Blasphemous!_ ” She pulled back only just enough to look directly into his eyes, silver into gold, light into light, until like the moon to the sun, her face mirrored his, two wicked smiles together. “Did _they_ create sex, then? Did _they_ father the Titans with Gaea, or spring fully-formed from the sea attended by singing Graces? _Whose_ arrows drive them into each others’ arms? – Well. You have done well, brother. Now they will sample _our_ arrows.”

               With that, she raised the camera to her lips and kissed it – blessed tool, to be so favored – and then turned it over onto her back, transformed into a recurved bow. They were agreed, then: traditional all the way. Of course he had tried to nudge her thoughts in that direction by wearing his own bow openly, but that made her unspoken agreement no less pleasing. He watched her roll her head and shake out her taut limbs, loosening them, flashing glimpses of her bright skin as shorts and tank top melted into the short dress she favored for running. Not to neglect his own flexibility or chance to posture, Apollo chose to move slowly, a fluid series of graceful poses to show him as both lithe and well-muscled. He smiled faintly to himself at the way her eyes drifted toward and over him, as he had wanted.

               They had not hunted together in too long. He was already keen for what came after.

               She must have felt the same. “A wager?” she said over her shoulder, pretending to be casual. “Top to the one who kills more than half.”

               He beamed, given better than he had hoped. “Accepted.”

 

               The first target fell to Artemis, as it often did. The man’s bald pate stood out easily against the slate sky, and her first arrow flew cleanly through his right temple and well into his skull. Aneurism, human doctors would name it.

               The second and third were Apollo’s, sitting together in a Greek restaurant, speaking in their perfect American English about how the ancient ways were being stolen from them by pretenders of other races. Given the setting, Apollo sent his golden arrows into their bellies and let them die gutshot. Their doctors would call it food poisoning.

               They swept across the continent laughing together, fleet of foot. Silver through the heart, a heart attack; gold through the throat, choking on a bite of Reuben sandwich. Silver into the thigh, knocking a blood clot loose to rush to the lungs for a death by pulmonary embolism, for which Artemis danced in delight. That was so fetching to watch that Apollo shot prematurely and caught the next one by the ankle; happily it caused the target to stumble into heavy traffic. On it went.

               The second to last they both hit at once, both shots fatal…and that was to be a deciding factor.

               At last they came to rest in a shaded spot next to a stream, away at least a bit from human habitation, pleasantly winded as they tallied their shots and realized what had happened.

               It was a tie.

               Instantly they fell to bickering. “You shouldn’t get the ankle,” Artemis protested. “It wasn’t fatal in itself.”

               “But he died,” Apollo protested. “And I hit that man’s neck before you did.”

               “By the barest whisper! There is no way to say which of those arrows killed him!”

               “The first one,” Apollo insisted in a harsh whisper, and quickly he stepped forward to take hold of her wrists, and yanked her toward him into a fevered kiss, determined to have his prize.

               She growled, though the sound was more happy than angry. “I will not submit to a cheater!” In an instant she had broken free and was running, laughing over her shoulder. Only an attempt to draw him into the chase, not really to lose him. He kept pace easily. When next he caught hold of her wrist, he slung her against a fir tree and held her still against it. That much she allowed for a moment, and he pressed up close against her, felt her breath hot against his neck. He razed his teeth gently against her throat, still smelling the forest on her skin and growing intoxicated by it.

               She hooked her foot behind his ankle and swept him off his feet, lunging atop him with each of his limbs pinned under one of hers. A breathless laugh.  Locks of her dark hair fell loose around her head. “There, do you see how that didn’t kill you?”

               He smiled, arching his back slightly to keep them close. A few moments on the bottom were not really a loss, after all. “Your foot is not an arrow,” he said softly, half-closing his eyes as he tilted his chin at her. Yes, that succeeded in luring her down to him, back into the kiss. Hungry movements of the jaw and tongue, this time; and then, patience fading, she reared up for a moment to cast off her bow. His he had already abandoned in the chase. She returned to kissing him, her talons caught in his hair, bobbing with anticipation. But when his hands slid up onto her back, she batted them down again and pinned them.

               “And what are you going to do now?” he asked quietly, teasing as she left delicious little bites up and down the sides of his neck. “How are you going to get at what you want when you are sitting on my clothes?”

               “Oh, and is that what I want you for? Do you think me starved for that?”

               Ah, this. This was the risk he ran when they played their games in the wild. Sometimes they brought out a side of her that could be too cruel.

“Traitor,” he muttered against her skin. “I should have been more precise.”

               “In what sense a traitor?” she grinned, knowing perfectly well. “In what sense more precise?”

               He whispered it, half endearment and half bitterness. “When I made you promise that no other man’s cock would ever enter you.”

               “I have been true to my word,” she smiled, with that feral playfulness that was not quite malice. “No other _man’s_ cock ever has.”

               Even that had been a near miss, once. Accursed Orion –

               “My point precisely.” He surged up out of her control, rolled her into the long grass, grabbed her by the hair to pull her head back and expose her throat. His bites were less gentle than hers had been, a thing she minded not at all. Rather than pushing she dug her nails into his shoulders. When his near-frantic sweeps over her shape with his hands moved into pushing up the skirt of her dress and then of his own tunic, her hands joined them. Everywhere she could she grabbed for him – hands, teeth, legs. Even her gaze now, in its way, was grasping.

               It did not mollify him – only one thing would at this point – but it pleased him. _Yes. Yes, this is what you want me for. Allow me to remind you why._

               He entered her and instantly they were one again, the way they always should have been one. Light and dark, life and death, rhythm and melody, nature and culture, each seeded in the other, one perfect twinned flame –

               She spun him onto the ground and rose up in triumph over him without losing him, a skill she had long since mastered. She always caught him in that same moment, while he was overwhelmed with the consummation of his longing, when his senses began to reel and before he could regain his usual control and grace. So be it; here he could watch her face the more easily, and how she too was rapt in the moment that should be eternal but never quite was, and how her fair flesh trembled in motion as she took charge of their rhythm.

               He stroked her breasts reverently, and then her thighs, eyes dancing over her to catch everything he could. She who was always to be chased and never caught except by her own pleasure, always his joy and his crown, she who they might still call Daphnaea without knowing why –

               Her breath hitched, and her wild eyes returned to his; and perversely, she slowed. He took her hands into his, fingers interlaced, and they watched each other, wordless but conversing in soft groans. The sky above them softened into dusk, Hemera’s gentle violet hues reflecting how their wildness had suddenly calmed into this tenderness.

               Sweetest sister, Kalliste fairest.

               She drooped her head toward him, gracing him with as soft a kiss as ever she gave out in the woods, and he knew. He rolled them again, covered her, brought them to an ending fit for gentle lovers, one with kisses strewn across each other’s faces and tender sighs and a long, sweet trembling that took time to go still.

               He knew that she would not abide stillness with him for long. Silence she could abide, and solitude, that she withstood much better than he did; but stillness existed only as it did in a creature between startle and flight, or between crouch and attack. Resigned, he tugged their clothes into place as a way to stay in contact a little longer.

               “It has been too long,” she smiled, two fingers teasing one golden lock of his hair. “We should do this more often.”

               “I will see what I can do,” he beamed at her. The request was itself a joy. This new nation was wide, and he already had a wealth of names for new lists.

               The tale is told, sweet Erato, and I give thanks for it; and in time, I will tell another.

**Author's Note:**

> I lay the blame for this at the feet of Scarlet Magdalene and certain of her Facebook followers. We were talking about someone who had suggested that it was blasphemous to write about the sex lives of the gods...but apparently felt that wanting stories where the gods killed people he didn't like would be perfectly okay.
> 
> I took it as a writing dare. "Why not both?"


End file.
